


The Shadows

by wordninja



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, POV Draco Malfoy, Post-War, Pre-Slash, This was in my drafts for three years, kind of a character study?, please tell me what to tag this with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 06:26:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2219190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordninja/pseuds/wordninja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I saw my first sunset after a war I’d known I’d die in while sitting in what was basically a prison, waiting to be interrogated by Dumbledore, and Merlin knew who else, certainly guilty of at least most of what they would ask...and I began breathing easily again, for the first time in more years than I could count.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookjunkie1975](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookjunkie1975/gifts).



> This has been sitting in my drafts for three years, because I wanted to make it chapter 1 of a longer fic. And now it's 2014, and I've accepted that I am a lazy person who will never do that. This was beta'd in 2011, and I'm gifting it to bookjunkie1975 because she is lovely and I am fail at finishing.

I’m in the room again. I’ve been here exactly thirteen times; this is the fourteenth. The same bare stone walls greet me as I’m escorted to the same plain wooden chair. Pale light from the single small window shines in the same line across the barren flagstones as the hours pass. In the weeks since the war ended, I’ve spent more hours watching that finger of anemic sunlight trace it’s way from the twelfth flagstone to the fifth crack on the wall before disappearing. 

I sit at the table, in silence, because they never question me anymore until one of the two show up, invariably after the fifth crack on the wall has vanished back into the gray landscape of the wall, indistinguishable from any other space. It nearly drove me mad at first; the sitting in silence, alone, knowing their eyes were on me, watching. Judging. If I hadn’t been in shock from the war I think I’d have broken in that first hour. 

Relaxing as much as possible in the chair they always leave me in, I can close my eyes and see that first day again. I nearly did break, towards the end. Then the sun set, just above a jagged crack in the mortar between the stones in the wall on his left. The pallid line of sun I hadn’t really been watching suddenly melted against the wall; a puddle of quickly darkening orange, then a lick of scarlet flame, a blush of lavender, then smoke. 

I saw my first sunset after a war I’d known I’d die in while sitting in what was basically a prison, waiting to be interrogated by Dumbledore, and Merlin knew who else, certainly guilty of at least most of what they would ask...and I began breathing easily again, for the first time in more years than I could count. 

I felt relief, and gratitude, and nearly overwhelming startlement at my own blindness. How had I lived a life for the better part of two decades and only then realized that it was beautiful? Thinking about it now, I wonder if I didn’t break then, because when Dumbledore stepped in a few minutes later I was laughing; quietly, but irrepressibly, too. I don’t know how long I sat there with my eyes closed, lost in the inexorable joy I felt, before I felt something touch my hand. I opened my eyes, still chuckling, to see the old man holding a ridiculously flashy purple and gold handkerchief out in front of me. 

I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

I’ve spent hours awake at night talking myself out of that epiphany. I’m a cynic. I’m an instigator. I’m an asshole. I don’t care. I’m too intelligent to be fooled by this euphoria that won’t seem to leave me alone. Then sunrise. By dawn I have myself convinced I am who I have always been. By the time the single ray of light begins it’s crawl at the twelfth flagstone, I know I am something else, and exhausted from lack of sleep. 

It’s made me see things from the strangest angles, places I’d never have considered before and now seem unable to stop seeing. My guard, usually the giant Shacklebolt, never flinches in his watch, never gives me an inch more than what I am due as a prisoner of war. From the wrong side. I still see him as an overgrown ape who is much too fond of physical displays to prove his leadership. But I also see that he is fair, to the letter of the definition. He treats me with no more aggression than is necessary, and seems to respect that I will not lash out like a lunatic at any moment. Whether he attributes that to the fact that I am a Malfoy, and will remain in control at all times, or if he assumes another reason for it, I find myself uncaring. It’s the fact that he allows me that respect, minuscule though it may be. It’s the fact that I see it as such.

And Dumbledore himself; the conversations I’ve had in my head while staring at him across that tiny wooden table could fill hours. Days. I’ve questioned his motivations, his actions, his reactions, his choices, his abilities, his nobility, his politics. I still think he is too slick. Now though, instead of the pond scum slime I’ve always thought of, I see black ice. Black ice that must be carefully watched for and negotiated around, but that adds a rush of dangerous excitement. It’s dizzying in my head, going back and forth on validating his causes and logic, and tearing them to bits. And the entire time, we sit in silence, staring at each other, staring off into the space around one another, ruminating with eyes closed. I don’t feel uncomfortable. I find myself unable to care what he thinks of, or what he thinks of me. I haven’t changed that much.

I have, however, changed, and that in itself has lead me to realize I’ve been wrong about some things, and oddly right about others. Mostly about him.

He’s only been here twice during my stay. The first time was early, the sunlight still on the floor. He was like a scarecrow version of himself, like someone had taken his ridiculous, too big clothes and stuffed them with straw, but only halfway. They’d drawn a face, but only the barest sketch of one. He looked wilted, half-dead. I felt the urge to get sick then, suddenly and violently, and I’m still offering thanks to whomever deserves them for letting me keep my stomach inside instead of all over the floor. I think I stared at his feet for quite some time, just trying to turn human again. I finally started breathing without hitches, and decided to get it over with. 

His eyes were still too green.

We didn’t talk. I couldn’t, and he seemed to get whatever he came for in a few minutes. He walked out and I sat at the table trying not to pass out until Shackelbolt took me back to my cell.

If I’ve spent hours, days, thinking wild, tumbling thoughts in Dumbledore’s silent presence, I’ve spent lifetimes not thinking about Harry Potter. I do not want to think about his choices during our years at school, his duties, his bravery, his intelligence, or his ignorant fumblings. I do not want to think about the way he’s handled the press, handled his friends, handled the deaths, handled his enemies. I do not want to think about how he’s handled me, and everything I’ve done in the years we’ve spent together. Together in our own twisted way, and I don’t want to think about that either, because I see things so differently now. 

I’ve spent eternities not thinking about every single interaction we’ve had, and seeing them in this new light. I don’t ever think about him, and I absolutely never think about us. 

The second time Harry Potter entered this little dreary room is today-now. He’s standing instead of sitting, and hasn’t looked at me once since he’s come in, nearly an hour ago. I haven’t stopped looking at him. He’s standing in the light, letting it shine on his face; or rather, the top of his head, since he’s looking at the floor. Instead of wondering what he’s thinking about, I wonder what I’m thinking about. Am I thinking that he’s being overly dramatic by placing himself in that thin stream of light, just so? Or am I thinking about how he’d never be so calculated, and that maybe he’s just drawn to the warmth and the light? Am I thinking about how we’re a nearly flawless foil of one another, cut out only to fight from opposite sides, or how suddenly being at any side but his seems not only wrong but impossible?

I’m torn between wanting him to look at me and wanting him not to. I’m not sure I can stand him staring at me head on. I’m not sure if I can stand it if he doesn’t, soon.

His chest rises and falls with a silent sigh, and I see more than feel my hands clench on the table. I can feel the weight of his voice, of his words, before he opens his mouth.

“Draco.”

I was right. I’ve never heard my name spoken so heavily, so laden down with things. I can’t tell what any of those things are, and not being looked at by him is suddenly maddening. I can’t respond at all, because saying his name right now will break me, or perhaps the entire universe. I just watch his shadow grow longer behind him, watch him stay silent and eerily still, and don’t say any of the things I’m not thinking. 

When his shadow stretches out behind him as far as the room, he turns abruptly and sits down in the chair across the table from me. He isn’t graceful, a word I still associate with the way my parents moved physically across the earth, but there’s something about him that seems agile, lithe, as he settles in the chair. His hands rest lightly on the table in front of him, and I force my fingers to relax. I count eight red crescent moons in my palms, slowly, instead of looking at him. I watch the blood rush back into my fingertips, and place them palm down on the table. I look at his collar. It’s too big, and stretched oddly, gaping enough to show one collarbone, sharply outlined under milk white skin. The sight of it hurts me, and I think about why that one wrinkled collar and scrawny collarbone would make me so sad. It’s hard, but easier than looking higher. He’s looking at me now, and I’ve got my answer finally-I could at least breathe when he wasn’t looking. Every recrimination he should say is waiting, and now I want nothing more than to put it off. Forever.

“Draco”, he says, and I can’t not look anymore. If I have been confused about this change within me, uncertain about the reality of it past my confinement, startled by the amount of empathy I feel for my supposed enemies, I am utterly bewildered by his eyes. Lost at sea. A green sea, deep and powerful and not calm, teeming with life and death, and wave after wave of something that is not hate. I don’t know what to say, or how to breathe. I’m underwater now.

He stares at me, and part of me wonders what he sees there now, if he sees something different than he has before. I bite my tongue against the scream fighting to get past. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I’m a liar. I’ve changed. I don’t know who I am. I’m sorry. Your shirt makes me sad and you need a sandwich or five, and I wish I knew a joke that would make you laugh. I’m different. None of it makes any sense, but the urge to tell him, convince him, is unbearable. My fists are clenched again, my fingernails falling easily back into the grooves they’ve already impressed in my palms. His eyes are still on mine, then they look away, over my shoulder, and I’m saved. I’ve been foolish many times, and whether I have any pride left may be negligible to others, but it’s never seemed so important to me that someone see me. See me.

“Harry. You’ve changed.” I realize I’ve spoken when his eyes flash back to me. I didn’t know I was going to say it, and before I’ve thought about what he’ll say, he says, “So have you.”

He stays a few minutes longer, but I don’t feel the need to speak again. He doesn’t seem to either, and we stare at each other in a different kind of silence. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not reproach or recrimination or disgust. It’s enough to feel a loss when he leaves, like a hollowed out space he’s left behind.


End file.
